What’s New Today
Story #1 shows
another drop in the economy. This time
is manufacturing. #2 Obamacare and what
it does to voters. #3 tells us young
voters aren’t high on Obama. #4 is about
Fast and Furious and its architect. #5
looks at when a news organization questions its own polling. When its CNN and the polling is bad for
Obama. #6 gives you two online ads on
Remember November. #7 has Charlie Cook’s
look at the coming election. It’s not
encouraging to BHO. #8 tells how the GOP
will repeal Obamacare. #9 is an
interesting look at Britain’s Atlantis.
Today’s
Thoughts
Bill Burton of
pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA said.
“They look at Mitt Romney and
they say, is this clown really going to beat President Obama?” Clown?
But the answer is, yes Mitt Romney will be the next president of the
USA.
Michael
Phelps will not repeat his feat of
winning eight gold medals. He’s only
competing in seven events this Olympics.
The
overwhelming majority of the 87 Republican lawmakers
who swept into Congress in 2010 and took control of the U.S. House are likely to be re-elected this year,
according to strategists and an analysis of redistricting changes.
It’s curious
that the left warned that a 5-4 decision
invalidating Obamacare would be a sign of politicization of the Supreme
Court, but a 5-4 decision upholding it shows was a big step showing it isn’t
polarized.
US manufacturing activity contracted for the first time in three years, further denting confidence in a global economy that is already feeling the effects of the Eurozone debt crisis and China’s economic slowdown.
In a shock to economists who were expecting manufacturing growth to slow moderately, the Institute for Supply Management’s survey on the US industrial sector reported a large decline in activity from 53.5 in May to 49.7 in June – its lowest level since the recession ended in mid-2009.
Any reading in the ISM index below 50 indicates a contraction in activity, while above 50 signals an expansion. David Semmens, economist at Standard Chartered described the number as a “really terrible” result….
More bad news for Obama.
2. SCOTUS
decision on Obamacare and its unintended consequences
Nearly a third of Republican voters say they’re more likely to vote in November as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling, while just 18 percent of Democrats say the same, according to a poll released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The poll, taken after the court announced its decision Thursday, provides more evidence that Republicans are more likely to be fired up by the ruling than Democrats — and could vote in stronger numbers in November….
More Republicans will vote this election than Democrats. Rasmussen shows the Obama’s approval
underwater among those who strongly disapprove vs strongly approve by 20%.
The New York Times reports that the generation that came of age politically during the Obama administration (18 to 24 year-olds) are much less supportive of the president than their slightly older peers. Those voters with only a dim memory of the Bush years are trending more conservative and are more skeptical about what government can do. Given the dismal economic prospects young people are facing, this is not surprising: the unemployment rate for 18 and 19 year-olds is 23.5 percent; for those aged 20–24 it’s 12.9 percent.
In interviews with some young voters, the Times uncovered a sense of despondency and malaise. They may not be Romney converts just yet, but they aren’t lining up behind the president either:
Maria Verdugo, a 20-year-old graduate of the
University of California, Santa Cruz, barely remembers the presidential
election of 2008—the one that spawned a youth movement that was singular in its
scope and political effectiveness—except for “something about Obama saying we
needed a change.”
These days, Ms.
Verdugo is so busy working to pay off her student loans that she has
not decided whether to register “as a Democrat, a Republican or what,” she
said.
Chad Tevlin, 19, a student trying to pay for
college by cleaning portable toilets in South Bend, Ind., cannot recall if he
registered to vote at all. “Pointless”
is how he describes politics...
Rather than being an inspiration to young people, it appears Obama has become a bad lesson that they are interpreting as it is useless. Hope and Change has become Disappointment and Cynicism.
4. Fast
and Furious Architect
A campaign contributor who was an architect of the 1994
assault weapons ban was the mastermind behind the Fast and Furious operation that let guns walk into Mexico, including those that killed
two U.S. agents.
Shortly after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry
on Dec. 15, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder's deputy chief of staff, Monty
Wilkinson, received an email from U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke
telling him just that:
"The guns found in the desert
near the murder(ed) BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going
to talk about — they were AK-47s
purchased at a Phoenix gun store."
It is an email that helps
demonstrate that Holder, despite his congressional testimony — as vague,
contradictory and misleading as it was — could not have been ignorant about
Fast and Furious and its deadly consequences.
It also brings to light the name of Dennis Burke, a seldom-mentioned Obama
campaign donor who oversaw Fast and
Furious and helped convert it from a gun-interdiction to a gun-walking program.
Burke, who resigned shortly after the
scandal became public, has long been a gun-ban architect for the Democratic
Party.
As a lawyer for the Democrats on the
Senate Judiciary Committee, he was
behind the ineffectual 1994 "assault weapon" ban that sunset in 2004.
Burke was also the chief of staff for Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano for a
number of years before she became the secretary of homeland security….
Hmmm, an anti-Second Amendment Obama contributor set up Fast
and Furious. And what do you think
Holder and Obama are trying to hide?
5. CNN
questions its own poll
I’m not putting any stock in it but let’s blog it anyway. After last week’s SCOTUS groin-punch, we need something to be happy about.
About a
third of all Americans live in states that are not considered safe Republican
or safe Democratic strongholds, including toss-ups states (like Florida and
Ohio) as well as states that lean toward one presidential candidate but
could ultimately wind up voting for his rival. In those 15 “battleground states,” the poll indicates that Romney
currently has a 51%-43% advantage over the president among registered
voters, if the election were held today.
“Note
carefully that this does not mean that Romney will win each of those states by
eight points, or that he will win all 15 of those states,” says CNN Polling
Director Keating Holland. “That’s both good news and bad news for Romney.
The good news: he has residual strength in states that the two campaigns are
fighting over. The bad news: Romney is also spending resources defending states
that should be part of the GOP coalition, rather than taking the battle to
Obama’s home turf.”
The survey
indicates that Romney clearly has a big advantage in some of those 15 states,
but the data does not indicate which states he is currently winning or how big
that advantage may actually be. Neither candidate needs to win all 15 of
those states in order to win the general election, so the aggregate results
from all 15 states do not forecast an Obama loss or a Romney victory….
If you go to the actually write up by CNN, it is humorous to read someone talking about how flawed it would be to assume being down by 8% is bad news for Obama in the swing states. Considering this is registered voters when Democrats normally get a bigger lead than among likely voters this is a disaster for the meme that Obama is doing well.
6. Remember
November
Here
are two anti-Obama ads worth viewing.
7. Charlie
Cook On the coming Election
…We are past the point where Obama can win a referendum
election, regardless of whether it is on him or the economy.
The success of his campaign is
contingent upon two things. First, when
focusing on the narrow sliver of undecided voters, between 6 and 8 percent of
the electorate, the Obama team must make its candidate the lesser of two evils.
It has to make the prospect of a Mitt Romney presidency so unpalatable that
about half of those undecided voters will begrudgingly vote for reelection.
Polling focusing on the undecided voters reveals they are a
deeply pessimistic and angry segment of the electorate and don’t particularly
like either candidate (fitting, because they don’t tend
to like politicians). But they show
signs of being more conservative than not. One unpublished analysis gives Republicans a 10-point advantage on
the generic congressional ballot test
among those undecided about the presidential race. Close analysis of the
numbers shows that Obama might have an edge with between a third and a quarter
of the currently undecided bloc. That’s cutting things awfully close.
The second key is turnout.
African-Americans look solid for Obama and very likely to vote in high numbers,
but young and Latino voters’ turnout
appears problematic. Obama’s recent announcement of a newly articulated
Dream Act-light policy could help, but it is too soon to see any data showing
measurable change. It is what many Latino voters wanted to see, though Obama
did it less than five months before the election when it could have been done
three years ago. After deportations had reached levels higher than those under
George W. Bush, it could take a lot to drive up Latino turnout.
This election is hardly over: The
totally unexpected could happen that changes everything. Unless the Obama
team can discredit Romney, though, convincing voters that he is a ruthless,
uncaring corporate buccaneer, this will be a hard election to win. Probably
the only upside for Obama is that the undecided voters appear so sour that they
might believe almost anything disparaging said about any politician.
During this health care decision
phase, just take a deep breath. That isn’t what the election will be about.
Obama’s
record is what will defeat him in November.
Most of the polls that show Obama in the lead have far more Democrats
polled than Republicans. Unfortunately
for Obama that isn’t likely to be the case for actual voters in November. They also have Obama under 50% with this
favorable mix of voters. Obama is
toast.
8. Repealing
Obamacare
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled
ObamaCare's individual mandate constitutional, the direction of American health
policy is in the hands of voters. So how
do we get from here to "repeal and replace"?
Step one is electing Mitt Romney as president, along with Republican House and
Senate majorities. Without a Republican sweep, the law will remain in
place.
But a President Romney does not need 60 Republican senators
to repeal core elements of ObamaCare.
Democrats lost their 60th senate vote in early 2010 after Scott Brown took
Edward Kennedy's seat. To bypass a Senate GOP filibuster and enact portions of
ObamaCare, they used a special legislative procedure called reconciliation.
Reconciliation allows a bill to pass the Senate in a limited
time period, with limited amendments, and with only 51 votes; filibusters are
not permitted. In 2010, Democrats split their health-policy changes into two
bills, one of which they enacted through this fast-track process. In 2013, a Republican majority could use the same
reconciliation process to repeal those changes.
The reconciliation process, however,
applies only to legislative changes to taxes, spending and debt, or the change
must be a "necessary term or condition" of another provision that
affects taxes or spending.
Crucial parts of ObamaCare meet this
test. Thus, if a President Romney has cohesive and coordinated majorities in
the House and Senate, a reconciliation
bill could repeal the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, insurance
premium and drug subsidies, tax increases (all 21 or them), Medicare and Medicaid spending cuts, its
long-term care insurance program known as the Class Act, and its Independent
Payment Advisory Board, a 15-member central committee with vast powers to
control health-care and health markets.
Chief Justice John Roberts ruled
that the financial penalty enforcing the individual mandate is within
Congress's constitutional power to "lay and collect Taxes," and that
the mandate and penalty are inextricably linked. This should suffice to enable
repeal, through reconciliation, of both the individual and employer mandates,
and their respective penalty taxes.
The state exchanges and insurance rules—"guaranteed
issue," which forces an insurer to sell a policy to someone who is already
sick, and "community rating," which severely limits the insurer's
right to charge that person a higher premium—are procedurally more difficult. Yet both are linked to the individual mandate, which
increases taxes. Whether they can be repealed in a reconciliation bill will
ultimately be decided by the Senate Parliamentarian….
Repealing IPAB would be a popular decision. Even some democrats have found fault with
this part (called a death panel by Sarah Palin).
9. Britain’s
Atlantis
Doggerland, a huge area of dry land that stretched from Scotland to Denmark was slowly submerged by water between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC.
Divers from oil companies have found remains of a 'drowned world' with a population of tens of thousands - which might once have been the 'real heartland' of Europe.
A team of climatologists, archaeologists and geophysicists has now mapped the area using new data from oil companies - and revealed the full extent of a 'lost land' once roamed by mammoths….
This is a fascinating article I
recommend you read.
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